Women in African society: Analysis of Achebe’s novels Things Fall Apart and A Man of the People

Abstract

This paper explores an image of women in Chinua Achebe's novels A Man of the People and Things Fall Apart. Achebe has a vivid expression describing the social cultural values in Nigeria of Africa, as a prominent postcolonial writer. I have analyzed the novels through the perspective of post-colonial feminism. Post-colonial feminism finds the intersection and relation between feminism and post colonialism. From the findings in Things Fall Apart, we can observe that women are portrayed to be happy in traditional patriarchal cultures, they are described to be harmonious members of the community even though they have to be beaten and barren continuously from any kind of decision making process and constantly reviled in proverbs and sayings. Also, I found something interesting about women that they have a big role in belief system. Again, in A Man of the People Achebe portrayed male dominated political and aesthetic society. This novel explores obstruction to sexual politics and African feminism. However, feminism is a very recent movement for women which encourages them every sectors of their lives. It is not about being women. It's about beliefs, political movements and ideologies which establish every rights for women. Also, it seeks equal opportunities.